Jason De Costa

My responsibilities as the main project coordinator and design stylist in Haier Living involved providing full turn-key site management for residential and commercial projects.

The following were the key responsibilities and duties:

• Styling services using soft furnishings that Haier living specialized in and sold exclusively from its showroom to show flats for developers, we worked with Fraser & Neave, Far East Organisation, and Capitaland during my tenure there.

• liaising with vendors and contractors for materials and quotations, scheduling.

• billing invoices which I would help pass on to the accounts department to ensure work wouldn't be disrupted due to late payments.

• Job site briefing for workers on detail and technical drawings as well as supervising carpentry installations that utilize fittings from cabinetry systems such as 'Blum' and 'Hettich' and 'Ika'.

• On- site supervision and coordinate each project's job scheduling by selecting the right contractors, and ensure successful and timely handover to clients. I'd always be on the phone making sure everyone was where they were supposed to be.

• Dealing with MCST regulations for condos and night jobs for commercial spaces in shopping malls.

• AA structural works under Haier's sister company, 'Iconn Alliance LLP', where I'd be on site for structural revisions done to landed properties. I've supervised rebar for and added storey, and boundary works amongst other architectural-level modifications to exterior facades and interiors.

• I am very adept at reading technical drawings and elevations
• Planned project concepts by researching and studying information gathered from designer meetings.
• Carried out project scheduling and site supervision for residential and commercial projects, of almost every conceivable type.
• liaised extensively with P.E, L.E.W and other necessary and vital persons for permit submission and approval processes
• Obtaining approval for variant addendum or additional works by communicating the necessary to clients, and the company.
• Ensured that all jobs I've managed and supervised have never run late into the penalty/LD claims stage.
• I've helped projects to stay profitable by assisting new designers get better cost estimates from contractors who are unfamiliar with them.
• Consulted with contractors and the design firm principal to identify design requirements for each project, and making sure those requirements are met with the best possible quality and delivery time.
• Used critical thinking to break down problems, evaluate solutions and make decisions, especially on site, or when the higher ups weren't in the country ( they expanded overseas in the year I was with them)
• Developed and maintained affable and effective working relationships with clients and vendors alike for repeated business, and better prices for the company.

I was hired for a short stint to fill a gap in DDS' team during the construction of Resort World Sentosa, a short time before it's full completion. As part of the DDS team, I worked under the guidance and supervision of the project Main Contractors- Kajima and Tiong Seng

I was sponsored to go for the BCSS license prior to commencing my duties on the job site.

My duties were, and not limited to the following:

• Recorded, analyzed and distributed statistical information.
• Abided by the formats given by the main contractor in regards to submissions and approvals
• Inspected products, fittings, custom pieces and building materials, including worker progress throughout the installation.
• Close working relationship and constant communication between myself and the supervisory teams
• Participation in daily update briefings held by the project director from the main contractor.
• Implemented new quality assurance and customer service standards.
• Inspected products and worker progress throughout production.
• Specified quality requirements of raw materials with suppliers.

My job scope involved:

• meeting with clients for presentations

•co-ordinating works between main contractors and sub contractors. liaising with suppliers/vendors on pricing matters to ensure smooth progress of project works

•ensuring all relevant documentation is processed with speed and accuracy.

Often faced with tight deadlines and budgets,requiring me to provide a viable solution that meets the clients needs without compromising on quality while still adhering to their design requirements.

I provide on-site supervision personally to ensure any mistakes can be quickly rectified as well as accompanying clients to select furniture, light fittings, and home styling accessories to furnish their homes or offices as part of my professional services.

• Analyzed SEO outreach goals and presented findings to marketing director.
• Performed ongoing keyword discovery, expansion and optimization to increase organic search footprint and drive relevant site traffic.
• Recommended changes to website architecture, content and linking to improve SEO positions for target keywords.
• Researched and analyzed competitor website and advertising links to gain insight into new strategies.
• Researched and implemented search engine optimization recommendations in accordance with development methodology.
• Optimized copy and landing pages for search engine marketing by improving UI/UX and actionable sales copy to achieve higher conversion rates.
• Incorporated XML sitemaps, robots.txt files and 301 redirects to facilitate search engine spidering, crawling and indexing.
• Created content strategies for digital media.
• Built, implemented and updated effective SEO strategies.
• Helped clients develop website portals and social media pages to promote businesses.
• Collected and analyzed Web metrics such as visits, time on site and page views per visit.
• Identified appropriate KPIs and reported key metrics from digital campaigns.

• Created innovative strategies to drive customer engagement.
• Boosted brand awareness and generated leads while managing internal and external marketing campaigns and programs.
• Coordinated with the creative team to generate dynamic marketing content and communication tools for promotional campaigns.
• Devised marketing plans using digital strategies, print advertising, and word-of-mouth tactics.
• Analyzed market trends and competitive landscape to understand opportunities and potential value.
• Spearheaded market research to identify branding opportunities, cement strategies and sustain a loyal customer base.
• Kept all campaigns and marketing collateral in line with branding and focused on target consumers.
• Collaborated with designers and editorial team on marketing materials.
• Generated new business with marketing initiatives and strategic plans.
• Created reports and presentations detailing business development activities.
• Collected data and performed customer needs analysis.
• Collaborated with sales and marketing departments to support business objectives and client acquisition.
• Collaborated with company departments to develop new strategies to capitalize on emerging customer and market trends.
• Identified key products, services, and customers and used data to devise innovative sales and marketing plans enabling dramatic growth.
• Consistently exceeded quotas through penetration of new accounts.
• Devised effective marketing, sales, and other promotional initiatives.
• Streamlined operations by delivering recommendations for knowledge-base processes and procedures.
• Directed successful SEO and link-building campaigns to increase the website's credibility and drive traffic.

In addition to the above, my role in this company included overseeing the first point of contact of the other teams such as the app and web development and frontline sales teams, and making data-driven decisions to improve internal processes.

Handling conflict resolution cases between front-line staff as well as customers to safeguard and uphold corporate reputation management was also a part of my duties.

My and duties for this short-term contract position was to handle the company's expanding portfolio of clients and it's contractual obligations to various Town Councils in Singapore.

The company is a licensed plumbing and engineering service provider that holds long term contracts to clean and sanitize water tanks on HDB rooftops, pressure wash blocks of flats, manhole drains, wet markets, and provide plumbing repairs and upgrades to public washrooms as well as HDB pump rooms.

My day-to-day responsibility was to handle the creation of purchase orders, work orders, billing schedules for work rendered to the following town councils and districts:

• AHTC ( Aljunied, Hougang, Bedok, Punggol)

• West Coast, Teban, Pandan Gardens

• Serangoon- Hougang, Lor Ah Soo, Paya Lebar

• Bishan- Bishan East, Bishan North, Marymount

I would also periodically assist my colleagues with the same tasks, but for the districts assigned to them ( AMK, Toa Payoh, Kallang, Jurong), being a support team member was rare- largely due to the bosses wanting me to just focus my efforts into the newly clinched contract locations.

Aside from being a point of contact for stakeholders, my role required me to communicate with the Property Executives, Property Managers and Estate Officers of either the town councils directly, or the managing agents that were put in place to oversee operations, as was the case with AHTC.

I managed the work flow of creating the necessary work orders, getting them verified and approved by the respective Property Managers in the form of a p.o , which I would then convert into a payment request sent out to the finance division of town council headquarters, and making sure that the finance and maintainence departments received a final copy for their own purposes.

This process involved being proficient at utilizing Microsoft Excel, particularly vLookup to maintain the vendor price lists, update payment records and also a lot of Microsoft word documents, and the use of combining software to attach images to invoices and convert them into pdf files.

The other aspect of this role was to help the company devise and implement a proper and efficient work flow for the on-site operations team comprising of non tech savvy tradesmen and foreign labourers to commence work, submit proof of work done into the digital database of labeled folders, and have the rest of the stakeholders access the folders to execute their duties pertaining to billing, follow up actions on repair requests, or creating new quotations-

the previous method they used was to send hundreds of photos of work done for the day, into a single WhatsApp chat group regardless of which town council or district it belonged to, and that led to more wasted time spent trying to figure out who needed to attend to which image posted, and a lot of frustrated calls made after work hours that really drained morale and productivity.

This role was offered to me as hybrid comprising of three days working from home, and two days in the office to print out invoices and combined pdf files, as well as provide updates to any of the on- site team managers.

I was hired on a short contract basis for a project executed and managed by the Department of Statistics, which is a subsidiary of the Ministry of trade and Industry.

The project I was employed for was the Household Expenditure Survey 2022-2023, where selected households would be extensively interviewed on their income, assets, expenditure, possessions amongst other things, such as how little or severely they were impacted by inflation of the economy.

This project is run every 5 years in Singapore, since 1974, and the findings are then released to the public as well as submitted to other ministries to help them align their public welfare policies with the findings of the report. The targeted families and individuals for the project was 130,000.

As part of a 6-man frontline team assigned to the central region of Singapore, my key responsibilities was to acquire the necessary data sets from people of diverse ethnic backgrounds, age, occupations, family sizes and also per-capita spending capacity- the main objective aside from gathering details of their assets, was to have them record their daily expenses for two weeks.

I would have to ensure it's accuracy and legitimacy using agency-provided equipment (recording booklets) and a data management system in a Tablet device to record all relevant data and supporting documents such as receipts and photos.

Our submitted raw data would then be analyzed by the department's data analytics team. If the data was deemed to be true and accurate, we would then be assigned another area or segment of the population until the project batch run was completed.

In addition to the above, my own responsibilities included:

• Assessed survey project needs based on location, respondents' age groups and planned workflows accordingly.
• Coordinated appointments with survey respondents
• Attended weekly progress meetings and follow ups.
• Educating members of the public on Inflation related policies, refer them to social welfare agencies where appropriate.
• Achieve the given weekly quota of 80% per assigned batch of respondents.
• Handle the disbursement of appreciation tokens in the form of supermarket vouchers, to respondents who furnished complete data and expense reports.

My current role in this education support services start up requires me to handle all the enrollment and on-boarding of foreign students which we get from our exclusive partnerships in China, and also the on-boarding of local tutors in the undergraduate and Master's degree levels for these students.

My responsibilities begin at the starting point of the customer journey, I liaise with our mainland Chinese partners in Chongqing, China, and receive data pertaining to potential students who are interested in our services.

I conduct suitability assessment interviews over Zoom, with the prospective students to ascertain their proficiency and comprehension of the English language.

Additionally, I help with coming up with a custom tailored lesson plan based on the assessment's results, and line up the potential tutors- this is mostly done in tandem with our Director, Slash Cheong.

I handle the collation of the individual's course syllabus and semester assignments, and confirm what areas the students need additional tutoring in, and go over the proposed lesson plans with our head of academic affairs- Dr. Andrew Shacklock as the last line of quality control.

Because the company also offers career design services by our in-house accredited Workforce Singapore (WSG) consultant- Nicholas Singh who himself is an adjunct educator at SMU and Curtin University, my role is to speak with the parents of our students who may need this add-on service to map out their children's career pathways and perhaps help them obtain an internship role with one of the company's network of contacts.

Additional responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Training members of the sales team to answer leads from Chinese platforms and groups, to hit sales targets.
• Forming and enforcing the standard operations protocols for student conduct agreements, payment schedules, refund requests, tutor contracts and oversight of administrative matters.
• Vetting potential tutors and conducting interviews with them, signing them on and on-boarding.
• Maintaining the CRM and document management systems for operational efficiency.

I served as a relief property officer at at a B1 Industrial complex in Jurong Industrial Estate- Westconnect Building MCST 4688, for the purpose of helping the new managing agent take over and transition smoothly upon taking over the contract. My background in construction gives me familiarity with Workplace Health and Safety best practices, BCA and SCDF protocols and strata management procedures.

Over the course of my time there, I carried out the following tasks:

- Create purchase work orders (PWO)

- Terminating previous vendors for contract violations

- Contacting new vendors for quotes

- Created Statement of Quotations

- Serve Subsidiary Proprietors encroachment notices

- Carried out a facility-wide emergency encroachment exercise for 300+ units

-Liaised with the police, SCDF and M.O.M to conduct site visits for non-compliant Subsidiary Proprietors

- Arranged for pest control to remove pests that appeared due to their nests being disturbed by the encroachment exercises ( bees and rats)

- Managed the daily inbound requests for wheel clamp fines reconsideration requests and appeals

- Created monthly Managing Agent (M.A) report

- Conducted Council meeting in tandem with the Building Manager

- Handled incidents such as delivery trucks damaging fire sprinklers, tenants causing damage to cargo lifts and arranging for rectification works

- Daily inspection rounds and following up with tenant feedback or maintenance requests in common property areas.

- Handled the renewal of fire safety and electrical permits according to SCDF and BCA by-laws

In the month of April, I also served as a relief property officer in PARC RIVIERA condo, to stand in for Muslim staff taking leave during Hari Raya.

My duties there were considerably simple as compared to managing an Industrial facility.

- Attended to residents feedback and requests in icondo management system

- Did site inspections daily and liaised with contractors for necessary rectification works

- Managed several tenants moving in/out and updating their parking quotas and information.

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